Be able to answer these questions

Identify and discuss several unique characteristics of Whitman's poetic style

1) Anaphor (Nor, nor, nor, nor) 2) Free Verse (poetry that doesn't rhyme or have a regular meter)

Explain the choices Thoreau in "Resistance..." says we have when faced with an unjust law

1) Change it: petition, run for office 2) Obey it 3) Break it immediately: slavery=if it is morally unjust/will harm people

Point to moments in James Fenimore Cooper's work which demonstrate overlap or tension between Old World (European) and Native American ways of living in a natural context. (The Last of the Mahicans)

1) How he's dressed (reject comforts of corrupt civilization) 2) Rejecting people who are entitled/wealthier 3) Natural wisdom > materialistic wisdom/wealth 4) Cross cultural friends 5) Can't resist being a product of the age (white=race assumptions)

Identify and discuss several unique characteristics of Dickinson's poetic style

1) Meter and Rhyme: how they are formed not just by the number 2) Punctuation: Dashes 3) Diction: word choice

Discuss ways in which Edgar Allan Poe employs irony in "The Cask of Amontillado."

1) Situational Irony: Cask= Wine and Casket Fortunato thinks he'll reach cask of wine, meets coffin 2) verbal irony: can be seen when Montresor first sees Fortunato at the carnival and says "My dear Fortunato, you are luckily met" 3) Dramatic irony: Fortunato then tells Montresor not to worry about his health and that "the cough is a mere nothing; it will not kill [him]. [He] will not die of a cough." Montresor then replies,"True-true."

Discuss how Irving's "Rip Van Winkle" may be read as satirical.

1) Tongue and cheek references to Franklin (Die on a penny, work for a pound) 2) Depiction of Dame (Mrs.) 3) Towns sign: before and after 4) american history vs. European history

Discuss the significance of Thoreau's choice of "Economy" to title his first chapter

1) economize: simplify (what do you really need?) 2) economy: exchange of goods (economy is the problem of the world in that day and age)

What may Whitman mean when he asserts that the "United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem"

1. american writers didn't have anything to proove (new type of lit) 2. Celebrated the freedom indviduality youthfulness of the nation I=> "eye" => U.S => infinite potential "Song of myself" = talking about all of America

Explain why and ways in which Dickinson rejects conventions of "rhyme or uniformity" in her poems

Doesn't title poems Punctuation isn't conventional Jumps from one idea to another Writing with the idea of not publishing?? Writing for herself? Convention is conventional The normal ideas of poetry in that day wasn't good enough for her

How is "The Cask of Amontillado" a story that addresses the ambiguities of identity

Fatal flaw of both characters is obsessive pride Amontillado is following Montresor despite the cave being covered in bones and he won't be showed up by anybody Montressor: wanted to seek revenge but then feeling bad about fortunato after he traps him in the vault.

Discuss the ways in which the works of Hawthorne and Poe illustrate or embody dark romantic tendencies

Flips the idea of romantics to explain how human nature isn't purely good and emotional and portray it as torturing 1) No mankind perfection 2) Individuals prone to sin and self-destruction 3) nature= deep sinister spiritual force

Explain why and ways in which Whitman rejects conventions of "rhyme or uniformity" in his poem

Free Verse Anaphor "Yawp" lacking all nnormal communicative properties of language Saying everything and saying nothing Jumping from idea to idea

Explain what Thoreau means in "Economy" when he asserts that "the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation"

How people live thinking about the means and ends People think that their means (things) will make them happy But don't have goal so they "live lives of quiet desperation"

Discuss why it is thematically appropriate that "Bartleby the Scrivener," be subtitled "A Story of Wall-Street"

Literally and figuratively Wall street THEN and NOW is the heart of corporate America Melville was building a critique of capitalistic America How they don't value people for their values but develop them to become robots (one task on an assembly line) Wall= Barrier (either blocks or secludes) (workers and boss)

Discuss the distinction, for Thoreau in "Economy" between the "means" and the "ends" of life

Means: how/what you would do to achieve your goal (Food, Shelter, Clothing, Fuel)=acquisition won't make you happy=materialism Ends: goal (how/why you want to live and make you happy)

Discuss the ways in which the work of Melville illustrates or embodies Dark Romantic tendencies

Narrator: He doesn't think human nature is purely good Romantics who weren't dark had a positive idea of human nature He's writing about a system that harms humans Dark romantics: Dickinson, hawthorn, Melville, poe Flips the idea of romantics in the day to explain how human nature isn't purely good and emotional and portray it as torturing

What may the narrator might mean when he exclaims, "Ah, Bartleby! Ah, humanity!" in the end of this story

Narrators" redemption= feel empathy for someone He understands there's suffering in the world He only touches him when he's dead but feels the suffering of him He looks into his past when he doesn't have too He understands the damage of Bartley and appalling that he suffered that much and he realizes it happens all around him

Discuss how Irving's "Rip Van Winkle" explores the concept of identity, both personal and national.

Personal: identity crisis 1) falling asleep (not realizing for 20 years) 2) Forgotten in village 3) Sees mirror image (son) and has identity crisis 4) What he was vs. what he wants to become? (Lazy) National: identity crisis 1) America doesn't have an identity 2) Fight in revolution to break away and become a separate union 3) What we were vs. what we want to become (a nation)

What does Free Verse mean and be able to identify the elements of it.

Poetry that doesn't rhyme or have a regular meter

Discuss the large-scale issues/questions Hawthorne's "The Birth-¬Mark" raises.

Should you change nature? Who constitutes beauty= society, individual or loved one Who constitutes intelligence= society or individual

Discuss grass as a central metaphor for Whitman's poem

Symbol of regeneration in nature Symbol of democracy Civil war= graves=grass Grows everywhere

Discuss the significance of Montresor's opening assertion about what constitutes successful revenge, and his final words, "May he rest in peace."

•Exact revenge without being penalized or caught •He blew that cause he's telling the story years later •If you act on revenge they need to understand why you do it •He got turmoil, never going to leave him, he killed him but got no satisfaction out of it •His plea to himself if he gets peace then he can experience peace himself

Discuss how the authors we read for this section write about confronting moral ambiguity, and why this theme might be especially appropriate for America in the mid-1800s.

•Hawthorn: characters struggling with right/wrong-hard questions (Portion: kill or live forever) •Obsession vs Attraction OR Right vs. Wrong •Genetic modified food= modernized example •Slavery= right or wrong? •Removal of Indians

Discuss whether or not Thoreau is arguing in "Resistance..." that we should break laws whenever we think them unjust

•If unjust=obey them •If unjust/and harm individuals (slavery and poll tax)=break them •Government is troubling but necessary (best when they govern least) •"The law will never make men free; it is men who have got to make the law free"

Understand how romantic writers present a different view of the world, humanity, and/or nature VS. writers of the enlightenment/earlier colonial writers

•Interested in emotions and feelings rather than logic •Started to differentiate America from England (chars. settings and plots) •Attraction to the sublime, picturesque, beautiful •Desire to escape reality •Use of supernatural/Gothic suspense

Discuss how "Rip Van Winkle" can be read as a story about a particular man's quest and a whole nation's quest.

•Personal: 1) quest to develop an identity 2) quest to achieve desired livelihood 3) quest to experience freedom •National: 1) quest to develop an identity 2) quest to individualize 3) quest to experience freedom

Explain why it might be difficult to read Hawthorne's "The Birth-Mark" as a morally reductive tale.

•There is no simple way to explain, Perfection, God, nature, Science etc •Impossible to be perfect=perfect at death •Don't play god=don't control nature •Female submission=male patriarchy •Science vs nature vs uncertainty •Science vs passion Alymer: Symbol of intellect/science AND the mind and how dangerous the mind it

Discuss Emerson's concept of self and self-reliance relative to John Winthrop's

•Totally opposite •Emerson doesn't trust any collectives, total system of thought, said individuals are their best thinkers Promoted resisting to conforming to societal norms thinking for oneself "The Thoughtless Man" •Winthrop said individuals are original sinners and collective thought (church) is good •If you acted as an ind. You are sinning and damaging other ind.